1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector, and more particularly to an electrical connector for a sheet-like connection member such as a flexible printed circuit or cable (FPC), a flexible flat cable (FFC) and so forth. All of these cables and circuit hereafter will be generally referred to as “FPC” for simplification.
2. Description of Related Art
A conventional FPC connector generally includes a plurality of terminals each comprising a contact beam provided with a contact portion adapted for contacting an FPC and a pivot beam extending substantially parallel to and opposed to the contact beam, a housing adapted for holding the terminals and comprising opposite lower and upper walls defining a cavity therebetween for receiving the FPC. For fixing the terminals, the housing defines a plurality of grooves each comprising an upper section defined in the under surface of the upper wall to communicate with the cavity and a lower section defined in the upper surface of the lower wall to communicate with the cavity. Each terminal has the pivot beam thereof accommodated in the upper section of the groove and exposed to the cavity and the contact beam thereof accommodated in the lower section of the groove and exposed to the cavity, while the top surface of the pivot beam is shielded by the upper wall of the housing and the bottom surface of the contact beam is shielded by the lower wall of eth housing. Such kind of FPC connectors can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,893,288, 6,755,682 and 6,099,346.
However, as the upper wall is required to shield the top surface of the pivot beam, an extra thickness of the upper wall above the pivot beam is required, and likely, an extra thickness of the lower wall under the contact beam is required as a result of having to shield the bottom surface of the contact beam. That increases a height of the whole connector.
Otherwise, there is a conventional FPC connector in which terminals are assembled to the housing from an underside of the housing, and the top and bottom surfaces of the terminals are shieldless, yet are exposed to exterior, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,431,897. However, such kind of FPC connectors are required to have a large width dimension in a direction along which an FPC is inserted, since the terminal has a long tail extending rearwards from a contact beam or pivot beam of the terminal. That does not meet the minimization requirement for the FPC connector as well.
Therefore, it is desired to have a new FPC connector with minimized profile.